Re: Pain, Pain go away, come again some other day....

Jen(hope you don't get sick of me answering every one of your posts? Well I just wanted to tell you, I know how it feels to feel very very empty. In 1993 and 94, i had anorexia and sort of overcame it but then fell into that depression where I just felt like, waht is life for, will i ever be happy again? I couldn't imagine ever feeling happy and free again. I was afraid of a lot of things, my days hade become such a stuck-up routine, i was done with high school and hadn't started college yet and did like... nothing much. Trying to fill up my days. Feeling empty and scared and... not really alive. really really numb. Like, no real feelings. My journal fuill of sad poems and entries, liek: I want to finally live again! Will I ever really live again? I am so far from freedom, happiness... remembering how good it had been and asking, whgat has happened? Feeling stuck, starting to lose all hope that it would ever change...what would i have said if at that time, somebody would have come to me and said: You know, next year, you will have a brand new dream, int eh summer of 95, you will cross the ocean and fly to San Farncisco and fall in love with that city, you will run down the hills with the dog of the family you will be staying with, yes you will run and marvel at the pink skies and shout, I am aaaalll right again! I am finally free again! I am finally happy again!

I would have laughed it off. Said: What, me? Cross the oceab? You have got to be kidding. I am so stuck it is hard to even go anywhere arounf here!!!

But it is what happened. Actaully my parents, that summer, paid for the trip. They had seen something was very wrong. But the important thing is: It is NOT the trip that made me happy. it was having a dream again. it was, thinking suddenly, one day, I want to do something, this is not the life I want. Starting to dream again... aboiut venturing out into the world. THAT was the day the depression lifted, i guess. When I started having dreams and plans again, early in 95. And a smile crossed my face. And my Mom asked me, what happened, you look so happy, did you win the lottery?No. But I had a dream again, i wanted to do things again.

The message I want to give you ehre is, yes, depression makes as feel hopeless and empty, but that is a feeling, a symptom. And as real as it feel and as much as you think it will not go away ever: That is wrong! It WILL go away!Depression made me feel there is no sense in life, it made me feel hopeless and empty. All the little things I used to enjoy seemed so ridiculous, so trivial.The thing is: That is depression, never forget that, it turns your thinking way off, it distorts it.

You know, there is a sense, a purpose, to life, only: We are not supposed to know it! It always has to be bigger than we can understand. We NEED that uncertainty, we are human and if we knew everything, what would we strive for?There IS a meaning in life.

Please if you are suicidal now do what I said to do in the last long message, call 911 or a crisis line, go to http://www.metanoia.org/suicide/ In any case TALK to somebody about how you feel. Tell them you dont feel safe. Just dont trust your own thoughts. Depression distorts them!!!

Kathrinp.s. once again: The emptiness is just a symptom, a feeling. It will NOT last.